Water, Water | Random House Publishing Group

About the Book

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the former Poet Laureate of the United States and New York Times bestselling author of Aimless Love comes a wondrous new collection of poems focused on the joys and mysteries of daily life.

“Among the best poems that [Billy] Collins has ever written.”—Maureen Corrigan, NPR

“Witty, wry and tender when it hurts, Water, Water is a pleasure to read and easy to give.”—The Washington Post

“Collins remains the most companionable of poetic companions.”—The New York Times

One of People’s Best New Books

In this collection of sixty new poems, Billy Collins writes about the beauties and ironies of everyday experience. A poem is best, he feels, when it begins in clarity but ends with a whiff of mystery.

In Water, Water, Collins combines his vigilant attention and respect for the peripheral to create moments of delight. Common and uncommon events are captured here with equal fascination, be it a cat leaning to drink from a swimming pool, a nurse calling a name in a waiting room, or an astronaut reciting Emily Dickinson from outer space. With his trademark lyrical informality, Collins asks us to slow down and glimpse the elevated in the ordinary, the odd in the familiar. It’s no surprise that The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal both call Collins one of America’s favorite poets.

The Monet Conundrum

Is every one of these poems
different from the others
he asked himself,
as the rain quieted down,

or are they all the same poem,
haystack after haystack
at different times of day,
different shadows and shades of hay?

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Praise for Water, Water

“Witty, wry and tender when it hurts, Water, Water is a pleasure to read and easy to give.”—The Washington Post

“Poems that center the beauty in the mundane . . . [Collins’s] approachable verses are a delightful balm.”—People

“These poems offer variations on the theme of finding wonder in everyday things. They shimmer with wry revelation, a bright tonic in a fading year.”—Christian Science Monitor

“Among the best poems that Collins has ever written.”—Maureen Corrigan, NPR

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Excerpt

Water, Water

Fire

I’m having a swell time reading Lonesome Dove,
glad I still have 400 pages to go,
but this paperback is one
of a thousand things around me
I would not grab as I dashed into the street
if the house ever decided to burst into flames.

I probably couldn’t find the cat
for all the smoke filling every room,
so let me see, give me a minute . . .

I should have thought of this earlier
before the fire trucks arrived
and men in helmets were rushing past me.

But here I am out on the lawn in a bathrobe
with a few sleepy neighbors,
red lights flashing all over us.
I’m holding a photograph to my chest
and the cat is sitting next to me,
apparently mesmerized by the flames.

I’m happy with my choice
as I look down at you and me in a frame.
Here’s a chance for a fresh start, I figure.
And as for the ashes of Lonesome Dove,
I can always get another copy, or maybe
that’s just where I was meant to stop reading.

Marijuana

When I was young and dreamy,
I longed to be a poet,
not one with his arms
wrapped around the universe
or on his knees before a goddess,
not waving from Mount Parnassus
nor wearing a cape like Lord Byron,
rather just reporting on a dog or an orange.

But one soft night in California
I walked outside during a party,
lay down on the lawn
beneath a lively sky,
and after an interlude of nonstop gazing,
I happened to swallow the moon,
yes, I opened my mouth in awe
and swallowed the full moon whole.

And the moon dwelled within me
when I returned to the lights of the party,
where I was welcomed back
with understanding and hilarity
and was recognized long into the night
as The Man Who Swallowed the Moon,
he who had walked out of a storybook
and was dancing now with a girl in the kitchen.

Ode to Joy

Friedrich Schiller called Joy the spark of divinity,
but she visits me on a regular basis,
and it doesn’t take much for her to appear—
the salt next to the pepper by the stove,
the garbage man ascending his station
on the back of the moving garbage truck,
or I’m just eating a banana
in the car and listening to Buddy Guy.

In other words, she seems down to earth,
like a girl getting off a bus with a suitcase
and no one’s there to meet her.
It’s a little after 4 in the afternoon,
one of the first warm days of spring.
She sits on her suitcase to wait
and slides on her sunglasses.
How do I know she’s listening to the birds?

About the Author

Billy Collins

Billy Collins is the author of twelve collections of poetry including The Rain in Portugal, Aimless Love, Horoscopes for the Dead, Ballistics, The Trouble with Poetry, Nine Horses, Sailing Alone Around the Room, Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning, and Picnic, Lightning. He is also the editor of Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry, 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, and Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds. A former Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York, Collins served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003 and as New York State Poet from 2004 to 2006. In 2016 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Florida with his wife Suzannah. More by Billy Collins

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